My name is Captain Reyes. I’ve run the 6:40 ferry across Harbor Bay for twenty-two years, and for the last six there has been one constant: an elderly woman in a green wool coat sitting on the third bench of Pier 4 with a thermos, raising one hand as the boat pulled away.

I never knew her name. I waved back every day, a small ritual that got me through storms and bad weeks.

This morning at 6:38 the bench was empty. The thermos wasn’t there either.

My first officer said we were already behind schedule. Two hundred passengers were waiting on the far side. I looked at that empty bench and made a decision that could have cost me my licence: I turned the whole ferry around.

I docked at Pier 4 and walked off the ship in my uniform. I found her ten metres down the pier, sitting on the ground against a piling, her coat over her knees, her thermos rolled beside her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, embarrassed. ‘I only slipped. I couldn’t get up.’

I called an ambulance and sat on the pier with her until it arrived. Her name was Dorothea. She was eighty-one.

‘Why do you come every morning?’ I asked.

‘My husband was a ferry captain,’ she said. ‘He died on the water six years ago. When you wave, it’s the only time I feel he waved.’

Two hundred passengers waited on the ferry, and not one of them complained. An old man near the rail took off his cap. A young woman handed Dorothea a scarf.

She had a broken wrist and a few bruises. The paramedic said another hour in the cold would have been serious.

I lost a day’s bonus and received a written warning from the harbour office. I also received a hundred and forty letters from passengers.

Dorothea sits on the third bench every morning again. Now, when we pull away, the whole ferry waves, and she waves back with her good hand.

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